Thursday, August 10, 2017

'Belarusians aren’t Russians and Never Will Be'

Paul
Goble

Staunton, August 9 – In 2003, Leonid
Kuchma published a book emphasizing that “Ukraine is Not Russia” in response to
increasing Russian insistence that Russians and Ukrainians are not separate
nations. Now, faced with Moscow’s continuing denial of their distinctiveness,
many Belarusians are making a similar argument about themselves.

Many of the articles and books which
make the case that Belarusians aren’t Russians just like their counterparts
that Ukrainians aren’t Russians are easily dismissed because their authors
insist that their nation is the repository of everything good and the other is
the manifestation of everything bad.

But there are cases which deserve
close attention because they go beyond that, acknowledge shortcomings in their
own nation as well as pointing them out in the other and that admit that the
cultures have been intermingled as a result of political history and social
engineering, even though such processes have not eliminated key distinctions.

Writing on the Belarusian opposition
portal Charter 97, Viktor Nikitenko avoids these pitfalls and focuses as he
says on both commonalities and differences in the characteristics and models of
behavior of Belarusians and Russians before pointing out that the differences
overwhelm the commonalities (charter97.org/ru/news/2017/8/9/259150/).

“The main
distinction of the Russian from the Belarusian,” the commentator says, “is the
powerful emotionalism” of the former and are often manifested in “maximalism
and extreme judgments.” The Belarusian in contrast is “the opposite of the Russian:
he is pragmatic, quiet and doesn’t like extreme ideas or actions.”

Russians are more inclined to “blindly
following ideas and slogans” and to rush forward without reflecting on their
implications. Belarusians in contrast take their time and don’t get so excited
about ideas. That works both to their benefit but also to their detriment in
some cases, Nikitenko says.

Another major difference, he
continues, is that Russians are far more open to people different than themselves
than are the Belarusians who are more inclined to a focus on their own community
and to social “isolationism” than to “collectivism.” That too works both for
and against the Belarusians – and one could add the Russians as well.

The two peoples because of a history
which has often linked them together are both given to hero worshipping their
leaders. But this hero worship is very different in the two cases. Russians
simultaneously deify their leaders while retaining an anarchic streak of
changing from one leader to another. Belarusians in contrast don’t go as far in
either direction.

Another distinction between the two
nations, Nikitenko says, is the relationship of their behaviors in public and
private. Among Russians, there is not a large gap in most cases; but among
Belarusians, especially now, the distance between how they have in public and
how they behave in the privacy of their homes can be enormous.

He gives the following example: A
Belarusian may spend thousands on a foreign car and stylish clothes to display
when he is among others. But when one visits his apartment, it is unlikely to
have been updated or even repairs.Indeed, Nikitenko says, it often looks like in style “a back to the USSR”
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When suffering from difficulties or
a lack of hope, he continues, “a Belarusian will love to identify with the
effective speeches of banal populists … who say what the suffering want to hear
at a given movement.In large measure,
Russians also like to be self-deceived and to put liars and clowns in the
center of attention.”

The two nations divide in this,
however. The Russian may give lip service to the grand schemes of his leaders;
but the Belarusian will “slowly but scrupulously” try to implement what the
leaders say “even if this process doesn’t have any sense.”

Ethnic Russians “very much love to destroy
everything old and build on the ruins something new and are inclined to
adventurism and revolutionary methods of resolving problems. The Belarusian
ability to remember and preserve their history and the Russian habit of
instantly forgetting the past” lead to fundamentally different approaches to public
life.

The willingness of Belarusians to go
along and their “latent xenophobia” are “the foundation on which the
authoritarian power in Belarus is built. Infantilism dominates the personality
of the Belarusian and is something immanent.” It is concealed in many cases by
xenophobic attitudes.

At the same time, certain Russian
characteristics like a proclivity to revolt and then submit completely are “absolutely
alien” to Belarusians.Also different
are the greater propensity of Russians for “spiritual simplicity” and “hospitality.”
Belarusians are more complicated and more reserved.

“Beyond any doubt,” Nikitenko says, “Belarsians
and Russians are two different people, and therefore the nationalists of
Belarus are absolutely right when they speak about the cultural-social identity
of their country and recall the history of the life of their ancestors in the
Grand Principality of Lithuania.”

That doesn’t mean they haven’t been
affected by each other.“The Belarusians
have learned from Russians both good and bad things.” Today, Russian television
makes this worse, spreading vulgarity from Russians to Belarusians.But even that powerful channel has not
succeeded in obliterating the underlying differences.

“In the final analysis,” the
commentator says, “Belarusians will remain Belarusians and Russians will
continue to be Russians. And that outcome will only strengthen the fact that
these peoples never were a single whole and never will become one.”